


The Most Obvious Part

by skullstompin



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2422886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullstompin/pseuds/skullstompin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What would be, if I ask, your first impressions of me?”<br/>“Impressions are difficult to form when I can’t remember myself without you.” </p>
<p>Not quite fluff, but damn is it sweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Obvious Part

It isn’t a happy few minutes before Guildenstern asks, “What would be, if I ask, your first impressions of me?”

“Impressions are difficult to form when I can’t remember myself without you.” 

He opens his mouth, as if in protest or advancement, before shutting the protest behind his lips in a squawked, ruffled sort of figure. A clouded moment before his voice returns, biting and spat as ever, “Well, pretend you’ve just met me. Say we’re much less than we are.” Settling onto the stone bench beside a rosebush, he throws his head back, eyes shut and shoulders poised wide, as though proud of a body much broader and threatening than his actual size. 

“But I know you as me. The only way I can not know you is if I’m not me, but I certainly am, so I can’t.”

His padded shoulders sag, and his eyes are a dangerous shade of deep. “Yes, I know you’re you, but pretend you’re you without me for just a moment. Or temporarily without me. It can’t be so hard.”

“Rosencrantz?”

“What?”

“Ah, right. So I’m Guildenstern then.”

He seems physically burdened by this sentence, and his shoulders deflate to a negative slope, “No. You’re Rosencrantz with a new pair of eyes. I’m the Guildenstern you’ve never before met.”

Pausing for several seconds to think couldn't have stretched on for more than a minute or two before Guildenstern barks his attention back to the matter at hand. Rosencrantz clears his throat, stands up straight as if in approach, and gestures before him in a kind of greeting bravado. It seems to please the other, who settles back into his confident pose, looking straight to the sky as a rose nudges tenderly at his knuckle. "My Good Guildenstern."

"Aye."

He fumbles with the defeated hope that he'd be fed more than an "aye", and Rosencrantz is at a loss as his bravado slides off of him and settles awkwardly at his feet. He bites his lip to pause. A gap in the pretend-conversation where a remarkable amount of nothing happens, and just as Guildenstern begins to turn his head, he gives a feeble, "Lovely weather, is it not, sir?"

Pretend body sidles from his shoulders. "Do you have any idea what we're doing?"

"No sir. Not a thing, sir."

"Stop saying that."

"What, sir?"

A pause. 

"Oh, THAT, si- oh that."

He sighs and looks altogether too tired and too young. "Pretend I'd never brought it up. Is that enough of a concept that you can grasp?" Guildenstern gets to his feet, and they both walk through the garden, through the entrance, and in through the forest before Rosencrantz interrupts.

"Why not adjectives?"

"What?"

"You want to know your first impressions from me? I'll give them to you in adjectives. Simple. None of that be-someone-else nonsense."

He opens his mouth, as if to protest (and only because it’s in his predictable, young nature, between us) but then shuts it and frowns inquirement. 

Rosencrantz steps upon a hobbled log, trying to balance as he speaks, his arms waving to and fro as to keep himself from toppling over, to make, what would be, another damned mess. “For example, the first emotion I can think of, in association with you, is that I thought you seemed sad.”

“Sad?” he’s almost offended by this, though he already seems to be offended by most things, so the fact that Rosencrantz hasn’t found himself shouted into defeat is what he so cutely considers “a plus”. 

“Yes, quite sad, but intimidating.” He hops off the end of the log and, with a bow, arms sweeping to the side, he receives a lonely applause of two hands. “Sad, a bit intimidating, er, strong,” (Guildenstern brightens), “dark. Like dark green, I think. Like your eyes. They’re very nice eyes, you know.”

“Get on with it.”

He frowns, and sets himself pleasantly onto the forest floor before taking to a wild flower by his boot and fiddling with the soft edges of the petals. He’s gone for what seems like hours, and Guildenstern’s sharp, pointed sigh doesn’t grab but the meagerest flicker of eyes before they fall once more upon the flower. 

Defeated, Guildenstern sits beside him, and watches the petals spin precariously round and round between two gentle fingers. 

“Handsome, also,” Rosencrantz says to the pansy, as though the conversation hadn’t been left to buzzards minutes ago. “At least I believe so. Handsome and dark. Yeah, that’s you.”

“How flattering,” it’s blunt, but somehow tender. 

“Confused,” he blows at a bit of pollen on one of the petals and then, satisfied, tucks it into the braid of his hair. It isn’t tied in very well, and begins to droop immediately, but he seems to pay no heed. “But then again, that’s not so much of a trait.. least for the two of us. I can’t remember a time when you weren’t frowning in puzzlement.” 

“But you can’t remember anything anyways,” Guildenstern points out quietly, and then the flower topples from Rosencrant’z braid to his collarbone, so he, nearly as natural as concentration of breath, brushes a bit of the strands from his skin and, cold and naked and heavy against his collar, as delicate as his clumsy fingers will allow, tucks it back into his hair. “Neither of us can. It’s a damned existence.”

Rosencrantz doesn’t object to this, but he doesn’t appear to be at all sobered, either. He smiles and looks up at the sun through the trees. It brings a familiar feeling of adolescence, that drifting to the sunlight with a squinted gaze, though Guildenstern cannot pinpoint the familiarity. He just knows it’s there, or has been there, and that is what the torture is. 

“If you awoke today, as though born with common knowledge, but no idea of prior existence, how would you feel?”

Rosencrantz shrugs; the flower stays put, “Free.”

“Then why is this so hard?" 

He shrugs again, and that's the very definition of his character: benign shrugging. "Because nothing about us is simple, nor is it ever going to be."

The other man's head bobs, and he appears to accept this concept until-

"Except for the way we feel about each other." 

The stomach flutters and a tide of anxiety jitters apart that precious bit of contention. "Oh?" he whispers. "Oh, what's that?"

Rosencrantz angles a stare through the curtain of sunlight. "Please. It's the most obvious part."

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback would be absolutely wonderful. I'm a very shy writer and this is a big step for me.


End file.
